19 September 2010

Time Marches On

The time for me to fly out for training in one of the Southern states and from there to the Middle East for another tour has rapidly arrived, in spite of all my denial and delay tactics.  The morning is going to come all too quickly, and the first few hours will be pretty hard on all of us.  The boy is still too young to understand that his Papa is going away for a long time, but Papa is acutely aware of all that he's going to miss over the next year.  The boy is learning new words almost every day and he follows us around copying everything we do.  I assembled a bed frame today, and he helped with the wrenches and bolts, usually mimicking whatever I was doing on the other side of the bed.  Or trying to drop the nuts down the air register on the floor.  I'm going to miss that boy and his Momma.  We might get a chance to see each other one more time before I leave the country.  They'll be staying with my wife's family in Georgia for a while so that whenever I get a few pass days they'll be within driving distance.

I put together a care package with paints, brushes, some files, and 1000 points of Dwarves so that if I get to a place where I have some room for a small desk or table I can have the wife slap a label on it and send it out without trying to find the right brushes or the exact colors I need.  I've also got a follow-on package put together in case I get through the first box of figures.  I've heard different things regarding the availability of internet access for my unit's assignment overseas, so I may or may not be able to keep this blog going throughout the year.  If I do have access I'll try to post pictures of figures or my hobby desk away from home.  I've also got a pile of RPGs and strategy games loaded onto my computer, so if I can't get any painting done I'll at least get some sort of gaming in.
 
I played through the first Dawn of War computer game during the last week or so.  It was okay, although on normal difficulty it was just a matter of building turrets around my base, researching a pile of technology, and running a large force through whatever the enemy happened to have in the way.  There were a couple of moments where I lost a significant portion of my force, but with a well-defended base I just had to build more units in relative safety and send them out to finish the job.  The storyline was decent, I suppose, as far as game stories go.  But the real draw was being able to build all the units from the Warhammer 40k Space Marines and run them around shooting Assault Cannons and Plasma Guns at Orks and Chaos Marines.

13 September 2010

A Taste of Fame

I've got a few days off from the Army before we leave to complete our pre-deployment training.  There is plenty to do, but I haven't really been motivated to do any of it.  The three weeks I spent in the Idaho desert exhausted me.  I have enjoyed spending time with the wife and the boy, though.

The National Guard and the community set up a picnic for the Guard personnel who are deploying with us.  The news media were there in force, and we had an interview with a reporter that made it onto the local evening news.  It's not anything earth-shattering, but I think we did all right for being such introverted people.  One of the guys at Hobbytown recognized us and mentioned it when we visited the store the other day.
I got a neat package in the mail today.  My shoe order came in after being on backorder for a few weeks, so I got my pair of Nike Trainer 1.2s in the Bo Jackson Kansas City Royals colors.
 
 
 
I'm pretty happy with them.  The blue is certainly very bright.  I think they would go down a lot better if I had a KC jersey or sweatshirt to wear with them, but either way I like them a lot and they are a good complement to the brown leather Bo Jackson's my uncle got for me.  They sort of form a shoe mullet, the brown shoes are the business up front, and the blue ones are the party in the back.

As far as the hobby goes, I haven't done much aside from reading through White Dwarf and reading the first seven books of the Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett.  The books are page-turners for sure, and of course they make me want to build my Imperial Guard army.  I also got the original Warhammer 40k Dawn of War computer game with a couple of the expansions.  It should be a good distraction so I can play with Space Marines and Orks without hauling around ten boxes of figures with me.  I've got more than I can fit into my allowed bags anyway, just with all of the gear the Army issues us.  Prepping for a deployment shows just how dependent an army is on a long supply and support chain.